Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman has been elected the 81st president of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), defeating Cyprus Ambassador Andreas Kakouris in a rare contested vote.
Rahman secured 99 votes against Kakouris’ 91 during the election held at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
A career diplomat, Rahman joined Bangladesh’s foreign service in 1979 and has held several senior positions at the United Nations in Geneva and New York. He has also served as spokesperson for the Least Developed Countries group and as a special adviser to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Rahman became Bangladesh’s foreign minister in February 2026 after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won the country’s first election following the 2024 student-led uprising that forced former Prime Minister from power.
Before assuming the foreign ministry role, Rahman served as high representative and national security adviser on the Rohingya crisis in the interim government led by Nobel laureate .
The election comes at a significant moment for the United Nations as discussions intensify over the successor to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, whose term ends in 2026.
“The role of the president of the General Assembly is no longer simply procedural,” outgoing UNGA President Annalena Baerbock said, warning that multilateralism was facing “immense pressure”.
The president of the UN General Assembly oversees sessions of the 193-member body and plays a key role in shaping discussions on global diplomacy, development and international conflicts.
The UNGA president is usually selected by consensus or acclamation. The last contested election was held in 2016, when Fijian diplomat Peter Thomson defeated Cyprus’s candidate by four votes.
Rahman’s victory over Kakouris marked one of the few competitive elections for the post in recent years.
(This article has been curated by Seekriti Saha, who is an intern with The Indian Express)
